


a handful of decades late

by paperpenpal



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Experimental, Gen, Ingrid's relationship with dying, Mentioned Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem), No Beta, i almost tagged this ingrid/death, prose villanelle, weird form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25902106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperpenpal/pseuds/paperpenpal
Summary: Ingrid dies last.Her mother goes first.  Ingrid is young- too young, to remember the soft features of a gentle face or the words whispered to her out on the grounds.  When she dreams of it, she imagines someone is holding her hand, sometimes it is the housekeeper, sometimes it is one of her brothers, once it was her father, but she does not know.What she knows instead is the fabric of a dress she cannot fully recall, only that it was too scratchy, and the way her shoes pinched her toes.She does not remember the color of the sky or the way her tears must have felt, winter cold freezing against her face.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 25





	a handful of decades late

**Author's Note:**

> This is less a story and more of a form challenge so it's more about sound and trying to conform to specific rules than anything else. I've always wanted to write a prose version of a strict poetry form. Initially, I wanted to do a [rondeau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondeau_\(forme_fixe\)) (more specifically a rondeau redouble) but there are way too many refrains in there to juggle in the hour and a half I had to jot this down so I went with my other favorite, the [villanelle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle)
> 
> I took some liberties with it because of the prose form but I tried to retain as much of the refrains as possible (with some changes), although I did abandon the rhymes. I also tried to keep it very short to emulate the tercets. ~~Trying to write each section in only 3 paragraphs was a nightmare so I decided not to do it.~~
> 
> The order of the colors is taken directly from this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS8mYXlN0B4)

Ingrid dies last. 

Her mother goes first. Ingrid is young- too young, to remember the soft features of a gentle face or the words whispered to her out on the grounds. When she dreams of it, she imagines someone is holding her hand, sometimes it is the housekeeper, sometimes it is one of her brothers, once it was her father, but she does not know.

What she knows instead is the fabric of a dress she cannot fully recall, only that it was too scratchy, and the way her shoes pinched her toes. 

She does not remember the color of the sky or the way her tears must have felt, winter cold freezing against her face.

When Glenn dies, she is too old to forget. There are knights and blades and armored suits lining up in salutes she tries to memorize. Her legs are stiff from a long journey north stuffed in a carriage and her muscles strain when she tries not to stretch. Something is said about the honor of it all and something less about the tragedy.

Her eyes keep steady on the way the ground looks, morning dew still damp, and Felix’s pale dry cheeks. Ingrid cannot make out his eyes from the way his hair falls into them in profile but sees the way his lips curl into a permanent frown and imagines them furrowed. 

She thinks that there’s a deep emptiness that she doesn’t want to feel. She thinks that something will forever be missing and it is not until she returns home, locks herself in her room, and discovers what it means to truly cry that she thinks more on the way people could die.

Her heart doesn’t break. It simply stops. She does not want to feel this way. Does not want to feel the way people live when people lose.

She shuts her eyes, draws her shades, closes her door, and hopes and hopes that she does not die last. 

Every triumph in war is a celebration of death. Ingrid had never thought to celebrate it. She has only ever learned to mourn or honor it but every victory here is counted by the number of those left in fields and whether they are blue or they are red. Who is left decaying away from home?

It would do well to send the bodies back but would it be selfish to do so just to save her own soul?

Dimitri fights and fights, ripping waves apart with the way his lance swings, high overhead, catching sunlight and steel, charging and chasing. Ingrid thinks that he will get himself killed. She thinks maybe he wants to.

She can do nothing more than fight alongside, trying desperately to forget the color of the sky and the way the blood must have felt, warm droplets against her face.

Against the backdrop of the Royal Palace, with Rodrigue’s death fueling a campaign towards something better - so they say, Ingrid learns again that death could have meaning. Or perhaps, it is less about death having meaning and more about finding meaning in it because death is death and always untimely. Rodrigue did not want to die, like Glenn had not wanted to die, like her mother had not wanted to die but they could find ways through it she supposes. 

After all, Ingrid is still here.

It is the only way through. She wonders at her own mortality. She meets it almost every day with every clash of sharpened blades and her war light armor donned, mounting a creature that flies, fighting hopelessly for a world where no one dies.

Sometime beyond, after war and the way it engraves their bodies, something new births.

But grief does not die when death stalls. It hides in the way Ingrid’s body moves, fluttering from one day to the next. It burrows deep in the back of her heart even when she fills it.

So she thinks about love and the way it calls. She thinks about her friends and the way they live. Dimitri smiles and repairs, his voice warm in all the ways she had long forgotten. Felix does not frown the same, his feet a lighter step when he moves his swords to dance. Her heart opens when Sylvain comes to visit, a gentle grin to the way he jokes. Annette sings her soft songs with glee in beautiful little melodies. Dedue’s enduring devoted forever presence is a strength she could only ever hope for. Ashe shares with her books and stories while they stand with conviction behind the seat of his Majesty. Mercedes’ kindness stretches and stretches and is felt constantly even when they are apart, with only letters between them at times. 

Ingrid fills her heart in this way and thinks less of death and the way it slowly calls, one at a time, over a span of months and years and decades. Instead, she remembers the colors stretching across the open sky, purple, blue, orange, red, and thinks of the way the sun feels, warm against her face.

In a dry field of grass, a handful of decades late, Ingrid stares up at the sky. Her hands are bonesore with age and war. Her children are grown and worn with their own. Someone very young sings soft songs to her as she drifts. 

Her last memory is the color of the sky and the sunset against her face. 

Ingrid dies last.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the past forgives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25911349) by [Julx3tte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julx3tte/pseuds/Julx3tte)




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